You remind me of me.
Any advice for a soon to be full-time trader?
- Thread starter Howard
- Start date
You remind me of me.
I saw your post about going back to work for 1 more month. Sure, we can reconnect again once you are done with your job. Hopefully, I'll get better at trading by then.Hi, MercForHire,
Welcome and nice to hear from you.
As you should not.
Sure. Just logging in for a quick comment now. We can talk more here or privately later.
Howard
It's my firm belief that you shouldn't be experiencing drawdowns and losses if you're successfully day trading. Aim for daily and weekly profitability.
If you find yourself losing money frequently - you should put in the hours and research needed in order to arrive at a place where you're consistently earning money.
It's not easy.
Good luck.
Howard
Thanks for the reply. I have no worries about my trading system. This is the hypothetical equity curve of my system since Aug 20, based on trading 1 NQ contract. I have a daily record of all the trades my system generated and I recorded them manually into a spreadsheet to produce the following chart.
My medium term goal is to get perfect at execution my system and attempt to "outsource" the trading to traders that employ. I will be doing that in China or Korea where the labour is cheaper and these guys don't need any real qualification.
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My apologies. I was in a hurry the last time I posted and I see that you've actually done quite well (I mistakenly thought you were in drawdown for an entire month).
Intriguing. How do you envision that? I thought you already said your system was fully automated?
Wouldn't you also be worried about giving away your system?
According to the graph, this system produced approx $70K per contract (NQ), over 82 days. So averaging about $850/day or 170 ticks...
That extra zero is a mistake, right? and system produced $7K per contract over 82 days... avg $85/day or 17 ticks?
I just want to add few comments to your original post of this thread which I hope you'll find them useful while treating trading as a serious business.
Never trade any setup with a winrate <90% since you are seeking stable and consistent profits to support your living while trading full time. Your goal for the whole day starting from Asian to US session is to capture ES 4-point of profit each day which is equivalent to $400 or more using 2-lot to begin with. That means you only allow yourself to take a trade or two to meet 4-point target without overtrading yourself.
Once you are able to triple your account, withdraw $15k to open account #2 to trade either aggressively by adding extra lots or trading setups with a winrate <90% or breaking some rules which you can't do under account #1. At this stage, you know that you can afford to lose $15k from account #2 without affecting your trading mentality. That said, don't change anything under account #1 because if you do you might end up ruin your trading career slowly due to unstable mentality that you might develop after making mistakes.
Using TST to trade might waste your time because weekly drawdown rule is so tight that your setups might not work well unless you've excellent timing entry techniques. Once you are able to triple your account #1, teach your gf how to trade and open account #2 under her name. It's a win-win situation because you'll learn more while teaching her as well as having her to support you mentally which I'm sure she will once she finds you are making profits over time. Plus, you are putting money into her account
Never trade any setup with a winrate <90% since you are seeking stable and consistent profits to support your living while trading full time. Your goal for the whole day starting from Asian to US session is to capture ES 4-point of profit each day which is equivalent to $400 or more using 2-lot to begin with. That means you only allow yourself to take a trade or two to meet 4-point target without overtrading yourself.
Once you are able to triple your account, withdraw $15k to open account #2 to trade either aggressively by adding extra lots or trading setups with a winrate <90% or breaking some rules which you can't do under account #1. At this stage, you know that you can afford to lose $15k from account #2 without affecting your trading mentality. That said, don't change anything under account #1 because if you do you might end up ruin your trading career slowly due to unstable mentality that you might develop after making mistakes.
Using TST to trade might waste your time because weekly drawdown rule is so tight that your setups might not work well unless you've excellent timing entry techniques. Once you are able to triple your account #1, teach your gf how to trade and open account #2 under her name. It's a win-win situation because you'll learn more while teaching her as well as having her to support you mentally which I'm sure she will once she finds you are making profits over time. Plus, you are putting money into her account
You mention you have an account 20K but don't plan to use it, instead of using TopStepTrader,
Your real profits are about $43000 from Sept to Nov (19K+26K+8K), so that profit of about 43K is on the TopStepTrader account or from your 20K own account? Just curious.
By the way, your system is discretionary, not automatic, correct?
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Sorry I don't want to hijack Howard's thread. Everything I done so far has been paper trading and sim account.
That curve was entirely hypothetical assuming perfect execution and fills and $4 per round trip trade. For each of the paper trade, I marked the exact point where I take a position on the chart based the indicators and my rules. These rules sometimes take more than few seconds for me to process in my head which can erode the actual result. After each session, I take the screenshot of the chart and record all the trades.
I tried TST for a month and decided it's not worth it, I am cancelling end of this week. I am paying a fee to play in their sim account trying to meet some goal and their loss limiting rules actually make me more stressed than trading real $ with micro contracts.
That curve was entirely hypothetical assuming perfect execution and fills and $4 per round trip trade. For each of the paper trade, I marked the exact point where I take a position on the chart based the indicators and my rules. These rules sometimes take more than few seconds for me to process in my head which can erode the actual result. After each session, I take the screenshot of the chart and record all the trades.
I tried TST for a month and decided it's not worth it, I am cancelling end of this week. I am paying a fee to play in their sim account trying to meet some goal and their loss limiting rules actually make me more stressed than trading real $ with micro contracts.